The Maiden Thief, Page 3

  Jakob dresses me, and then he takes my hand and leads me to his study.

  “I need you to hold something while I’m gone.” He barely opens a cabinet and reaches into it.

  I cannot see inside the cabinet, but from it, Jakob has withdrawn a delicate white egg. It’s perfect. No spots mark the surface, and the only imperfections are two small holes where the contents were removed.

  Dutifully, I hold out my hand. “It’s beautiful.”

  Jakob smiles. “And fragile.” He places the egg in the palm of my hand. “You must carry it with you while I’m away. Anywhere you go, it must be with you.”

  I frown.

  “I’ll know if you don’t obey me,” he warns. “You said you would be good. You said you would be faithful.”

  “I am.”

  For a moment, Jakob seems devastated. “You need to stay that way. I don’t want to have to hurt you. I want to be right this time. No one else was faithful, Verena, but you know me. You’re the only one who’s ever understood me.”

  A truth I’ve refused to consider starts pressing against my lips.

  “This key is to the only locked room in the castle,” he says, holding out an old-fashioned key on a length of red velvet as he motions me toward him.

  I lean forward, and he puts the ribbon over my head so the key hangs over my heart. The velvet reminds me of a trail of blood as I am forced to think of the facts that mean my husband might be the Maiden Thief.

  If Jakob is the killer, I am one of the stolen girls.

  “How long have you been waiting for me?” I ask quietly.

  My husband smiles and tells me, “For years, I didn’t know it was you, just that there was a Good Wife I needed to find. I thought it could be you. Your birthday was the right time, but then I saw what you’d written, and I knew you understood me.”

  “When I was sixteen,” I whisper.

  Jakob kisses me as he does when I give him the right answers. I stay perfectly still as he does so. Then he walks to the door and waits for me to follow.

  Mutely, I do so.

  “Karis and Amina were replacing you, not the other way around,” he tells me as he pulls the door to the study closed behind us.

  “The only locked door besides this one”—he lifts the key from between my breasts and then drops it so it thunks against my body—“is the door to the outside world.”

  I nod.

  “There are traps on the grounds.” He strokes my face and throat. “There are beasts that I set free to roam when I am away. To protect you. To protect us. You understand, don’t you?”

  I nod again.

  “You were my quest, Verena.” He touches my swollen eye roughly, drawing fresh pain. “I have to keep you safe.”

  This time, I force myself to say, “Thank you, Jakob.” I meet his eyes and add, “I’ll be good and faithful.”

  And then he’s gone. My husband, the Maiden Thief, the killer of my sisters, has left me alone in my beautiful prison. I cannot move for several hours. I sit in the silence and think. I had been right that the killer took Amina—and that she had gone with Jakob. I had been right that there was something terrible in his smile the night I had seen him with my sister. Worst of all, I had found a pattern to the Maiden Thief’s crimes. I had figured out why. There was so much that I had known, and the knowing still hadn’t saved me or my sisters.

  Whatever is in that room is what I need to find. Maybe it’s proof of his sins. Maybe there is something there that will let me reach help.

  Maybe it’s Amina. The others surely must be long dead, but she has only been gone a year. I have hopes that she might still live—or at the least, that I might be able to give her a proper burial.

  The egg is the easiest part. I wrap it in cloth and hide it in an urn. There is no way for Jakob to discover my disobedience, and even if he does, I would rather risk my death than do as he orders.

  He has killed my sisters. I will not stay here. I will not allow him the perverse happiness he has found in me for a moment longer than necessary.

  First, I need to see what’s in the forbidden room. I pull off the slippers that Jakob insists I wear, and I debate what to do about my dress. He’s so insistent that I only wear white slippers and white dresses that brush the tops of my feet. I can have bare arms or low-cut fronts or even dresses with no backs, but my skirts must always touch my feet.

  Whatever reason he has to keep my legs and feet cloaked in white, I refuse it now. If he wants me to do it, it cannot be good. I steal a sash from the curtains and use it as a belt of sorts. Once my skirts are tied up around my hips, I begin to try every door in the castle.

  #

  But when I finally find the door the key fits, I am afraid. The proof is within this room, the answer to my sisters’ fate, the details about the Maiden Thief that I thought I had wanted to know.

  I turn the key and open the door. A soft whooshing sound fills the dim room, as if many hearts are beating in time, as if many breaths are slipping away at once. The floor is wet with pink-tinged water, and glass caskets with gilt edges rise up like islands in a red sea.

  Most of the caskets are closed, but others are lined up against the far wall with lids open still. They are waiting to be filled. One of those caskets would be mine if Jakob found me here.

  I stare at them, the taken girls. They are arranged in boxes, alive but not moving, eyes closed, lips parted as if in silent screams. In each glass coffin, one of the missing girls is preserved with tubes running into her casket, keeping her alive and silent.

  The blood-tinged water would stain my dress if I hadn’t held the skirts up, stain my shoes if I’d worn them, stain the beautiful egg if I hadn’t hidden it inside an urn to keep it safe.

  I back out of the room and sit on the threshold. I unroll my long hair and wipe the blood from my feet. Then I twist my hair up again, stained with the blood of my sisters. I am grateful that Jakob likes my hair bound and my strengths hidden. I am grateful that my father chose to deny me comfort. Their callousness made me strong enough to survive this day.

  I glance back at the rows of glass-coffined women. I don’t know what he’s done to the girls, how he keeps them like this, but I swear to them, “I won’t leave you like this.”

  And then I pull the door closed and return to the library to think.

  #

  By the time Jakob returns, I have a plan. I spent years waiting for men to figure out how to stop the Maiden Thief, for my father to realize that he needed to try to save his family. I am done waiting on someone else to save me or the people I love.

  I greet my husband dutifully when he enters the castle.

  Jakob is restrained. He doesn’t kiss me, and for that I am grateful. There is a hatred within me that he has been nurturing for years. I didn’t realize it was a hatred for him for a long time, but today I know.

  We walk into his study, and I see the cabinet behind Jakob. The doors are open, and in it, I see the twelve beautiful decorative eggs. Several are broken. All are bloodstained. The taken all failed this test. I’m hoping I can succeed where they did not—for them and for myself.

  Jakob watches me with such raw hope in his eyes as he asks, “Where is the egg I gave you? I want to put it with the others.”

  “Here.” I hold it out. The egg is as unblemished as it was when I accepted it from his hand.

  He takes the egg and stares at it for several heartbeats. When he looks at me, there is such joy and pride in his expression that I feel a touch less afraid. I force myself to smile. My blood will join my sisters’ if I disappoint him.

  “You’re truly her,” he says in a voice filled with wonder. “I knew I’d find you if I looked long enough.”

  I nod.

  “There were others . . .”

  “Other wives,” I supply, and then quickly add, “I’ve seen their clothes.”

  Jakob smiles at me, proud of my mind as he has been so often. “But they weren’t faithful and good.” He strokes the egg. �
�You were the one I was waiting to find. I was impatient before, hoping to find you before you were ready.”

  “How many?” I ask.

  Jakob glances at the eggs. “None that matter now.”

  My heart twists in pain, thinking of the twelve women trapped in glass coffins. They bled. Maybe not all of them, or maybe just not the first one, but I can imagine my own terror if Jakob took me into that room. I’ve seen what waits there. I’ve seen the glass prisons. I would fight.

  I will fight. I ball my hands into fists to keep from striking him. I want to hurt him, but he is stronger than me. I must wait. I force myself to swallow my rage a little longer.

  “I’m here,” I tell him. “You found me.”

  He looks at me in awe, and then he caresses the unblemished egg like it’s a living thing. “I can set the others free now.”

  Jakob gently places the egg on a delicate stand and puts it in the center of the cabinet. Then he comes to me and takes my hand. “I was afraid I was wrong, that I’d need to try again if you weren’t a Good Wife. You understand, don’t you? I was always faithful to each wife. I didn’t touch them, though, not after I set them aside.”

  I can’t speak. The others, my sisters in blood and in act, were trapped in glass boxes. Some had been imprisoned for years. I feel sickened at the horror of it, at him, the monster I’d married.

  Silently, we walk to the room, and Jakob releases my hand. He takes the key from around my neck.

  “You are worth every sacrifice.”

  “Every one?” I ask, a bit of temper sliding into my words despite best intentions.

  Jakob doesn’t hear it.

  “May I open it?” I ask, and before he can question me, I add, “I want to help you, Husband.”

  The words are like poison in my mouth, but I need to be the one with the key. My hand drops to the knife I have tied to my thigh. I’m not sure I can use it well enough, but I will try. For the others, I will try. For my freedom, I will try.

  He hesitates, but after a moment of staring into my eyes, he relents and gives me the key. I force myself not to sigh in relief as I take it in my shaking hand. It clatters loudly in the quiet hallway as I slip it into the lock.

  “They don’t matter,” Jakob tells me, as if my nerves are over being somehow un-special, as if the pain of the taken is immaterial, as if the death of my sisters is something I could condone.

  I turn the key in the lock, grateful that he is staring at the door instead of at me.

  Quickly then, I step to the side. “I’m not as strong as you are. Can you open the door?”

  He rewards my implied compliment with a smile before he pulls open the door. I stay back as he steps into that room. I’ve been in it often in his absence—but the very sight of that blood-stained chamber still brings an ache to my heart.

  There are no more prisoners in glass boxes. The floor is covered with the shards of glass, and the taken rest in soft beds elsewhere in the castle. They are safe . . . as long as I don’t fail.

  He stands in the bloodied room, glass all around him. The shock of it makes him motionless at first. He looks at the empty spaces where the women he’s stolen have been imprisoned. Then, his gaze falls upon me.

  “What have you done?”

  For the first time, I am wholly myself, despite him, despite the terror I feel.

  “Freed them,” I say.

  He turns back to reach for me, but I jerk away and slam the door shut. My hand is fumbling for the key I still clutch in my hand. I need to succeed in this. He is stronger, and if he escapes, all of the girls he stole will die. My sisters will die. I will die.

  “Where are they?” He’s pushing the door, trying to shove it open. “What did you do?”

  I jab the key into the lock and turn it.

  “WIFE!” Jakob roars, his fists pounding the door. “Open this door.”

  “My husband died,” I say firmly, leaning back against the door. My voice is as unsteady as my hands. I shake all over. I count my breaths as the door shakes against my back.

  “There was an accident,” I say a moment later. “My poor Jakob never returned home.”

  “No!”

  “He went on a trip, but he didn’t return,” I continue to explain through the door. “He left me here alone, and I’m waiting still for him to return.”

  I push off the door and shove a heavy wardrobe in front of it.

  “Wife!” Jakob calls again. “You cannot trap me in my own home.”

  “This is my home now. I live here with my twelve sisters.”

  “You may not do this.”

  “It is already done,” I remind him. “I was searching for you, too, Jakob. The others did nothing. They let you steal us away. They let you hurt us. I will not. Not anymore.”

  He says nothing.

  I wish briefly that I could be strong enough to simply kill the man who has tormented my town, who has hurt my sisters, who has trapped and made so many girls bleed.

  “You’ll die before the next new moon passes, Jakob. There is only so long you can live without food or drink.” I put my hand to the door and add, “If you prefer, there are glass shards aplenty that are sharp enough to let you make a choice.”

  “Set me free.” Jakob speaks in the same tone he’s used when he’s disciplined me.

  This time, however, I am the one with the key.

  “I am setting all of us free,” I promise him. “You’ll be free of this world soon.”

  Then I walk away, leaving my husband-no-more to his death and returning to my sisters who have found life again. Some cannot yet speak, and others are barely awake. I don’t know that they’ll all live, but I have hopes for them—for all of us.

  One by one, I visit each of the bedrooms where they are recovering from their years of imprisonment. They’ve been fed through tubes, kept calm with herbs for so long that they were shocked to learn how much time had passed. Slowly, they will grow stronger, and then we will set our house to rights.

  I tell each one, “It is done. We are free.”

  I’d figured out the Maiden Thief’s test, and I’d trapped him. Together with the others, I will figure out how to disable the traps he’s set on the grounds. For now, the larder is well stocked, and my sisters need time to heal.

  There will be no Maiden Thief when the leaves turn next autumn. In his place, there will be only invitations to women seeking solace and peace. He’s left behind a home and gold aplenty.

  His many wives will turn it into something better now that there are no more glass coffins to imprison us.